A Moment of Silence
by Joriel
Summary: Duo learns how your entire life can change in just one moment.


One moment of silence can change your life forever. It can make or break your life forever. I wish I had known that a year ago.  
  
But how was I to know he'd actually shoot her?  
  
Somewhere deep inside the memory of the first time I met either of them sits quietly, in silence, waiting until I let down my guard. Then, either asleep or during the odd moment of calm, it leaps up in all it's morbid glory and mocks me that I should have known.  
  
The first day I met them Heero had a gun pulled on Relena, and was telling her to say good-bye. His finger was tightening on the trigger when I shot the gun out of his hand. He had really been going to kill her.  
  
But later, he got to know her. And when he went to assassinate the Queen of the World, he changed his mind. I thought...I thought it meant he had at least formed some kind of friendship with her, even though he obviously didn't return her feelings for him.  
  
And how was I supposed to know the other thing? That he cared for me? He was always ignoring me, or yelling at me. Dammit, I was the best of the five of us as covert ops and infiltration. So I wasn't a 'perfect soldier'. My job didn't need me to be, it needed me to be charming, resourceful, creative, and clever. So I worked on those things.  
  
Killing in Deathscythe was a relief for me in a strange sort of way, it was the only time I could really be me. Not befriending people I fully intended to betray later. Then I got to know Relena through Heero, and I found another place I could just be me. Relena wasn't as puppy-dog worshipful of me as Hilde, or as she was of Heero at first. By the time  
  
I really got to know her she had matured a lot, and wanted a companion, not a hero. No pun intended, journal, I swear.  
  
I didn't plan on ending up in her bedroom. It all started out with my hair. She once asked me if she could pull it out of the braid and see it down just once. That it was the prettiest hair she'd ever seen, even prettier than Dorothy's. So I let it loose, and sat down on her couch, wrapping myself up in it as if to hide. To hide the ugliness of my life behind a shining curtain of dark hair, so that she would only see my hair. Not see me, never me. Just the outside.  
  
I didn't want to dirty her world any more than the war already had.  
  
But she saw me anyway. That afternoon she made me a kind of crusade I think. If she couldn't save the world, she would save Duo Maxwell. I don't think she meant to end up in my bed any more than I did. But she liked it there. She started coming back often, and one day I knew I loved her. Not for the blind child she had been trying to be what everyone in the world wanted her to be, not for the clever politician she became later, but for the kind and loving heart that was just Relena.  
  
So I asked her to marry me. And she said yes. Relena Maxwell, what an idea. She told me that she would be far prouder to carry the name of a church that harbored homeless children than any royal last name in the world. For my birthday, which was only 3 days later, she brought me to a church she has been funding the building of for the past year. Attached to the back of it was a huge orphanage designed around the children's happiness.  
  
The plaque dedicated to Father Maxwell and Sister Helen brought me to my knees, that someone wanted to know a streetrat with only borrowed names this well, to offer such a beautiful thing to me.  
  
We planned a party for all of our friends, and only our friends. No political or social guests, just the people we loved to learn first that we were planning to marry. Relena wore this lovely black gown for me, even though she blushed her way through the first hour of the party. I followed her around like a puppy dog, she looked so lovely that night.  
  
The right mix of sexiness and class.  
  
We all sat down to dinner, and I made the announcement. There was a moment of stunned silence, then everyone began to cheer for us. Everyone except one.  
  
Heero. For a fleeting moment I thought he was furious, that maybe he had loved her after all. So I was silent when he stood up suddenly, it hurt that my closes friend, practically my only friend during the war other than Quatre, was going to walk away.  
  
If only that was all he did. Today is the first anniversary of our engagement party. I'm writing this in the graveyard. I thought I should spend it with her, even if she's beyond knowing that I'm here.  
  
I will never forget the cold words falling out of his mouth, telling her he was going to kill her. I was stunned, I thought it was some kind of bizarre practical joke. Heero's social skills were limited, after all. I still said nothing, just stared mutely at him.  
  
The gun rose, and fired.  
  
Blood splattered all over me, and it was still silent. She never screamed, just a tiny shocked gasp. She fell from her seat onto a horrified Quatre, who caught her as best he could. both of them tumbling to the floor. I knelt by her, pulling her close to me, telling her it was going to be okay, screaming for a doctor. She actually smiled at me, and told me she loved me. It felt so surreal, like watching a sappy movie. The blood on my skin was cooling though, and I realized so was her life.  
  
It wasn't going to be okay, and we both knew it. She was still smiling though, for me. Even dying on the floor at her own engagement party she was thinking of me first. And later Wufei asked me if I had really loved her, or wanted her because I thought Heero did. I hit him, as hard as I could, for twenty minutes. I think he did it on purpose, I had gone into a kind of shock after the ambulance finally got there and took her from me.  
  
I turned to stare at him, still standing there holding the gun, his face cool and unmoved by any of this.  
  
Why? It was all I asked him, the only word I could get out of my closing throat.  
  
"She took what I wanted," he answered calmly, as if she had stolen his chocolate cupcake and he merely slapped her wrist over it. Trowa had a gun on him, but I could see the bulge to his one side under his sweater. By the time anyone realized why I had suddenly lunged at Trowa I already had the gun and raised it. Heero's blue eyes looked back at me calmly, and everything was kind of in slow motion.  
  
He knew I was going to pull the trigger. But there was no hint of any kind of quest for forgiveness in his eyes. If he had looked even slightly sorry...I would have put the gun down. But there was satisfaction! She was just another mission to him!  
  
So I pulled the trigger.  
  
I lost my love and my best friend from the war in one day.  
  
Quatre's money saw to it that I got a quick trial and a verdict of innocent by self defense. I work at the orphanage now, and every day I stop to kiss the plaque with Father Maxwell and Sister Helen's names on it. Then I walk a few feet and do the same to the one I had put up with Relena's name on it. I spend the twilight there every day, contemplating  
  
everything I learned from her.  
  
A moment of silence can change your whole life. Always speak up, stop the tragedies before they happen. And I am, Relena. I really am.  
  
I have to go home now, the kids will be waiting for me to eat their suppers. I do what you wanted, not a single child I have ever found stayed on the streets, and they never will. It's all I can give you now. 


End file.
